


the devil is not as black as he is painted

by Errantmushroom



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Demon Kylo Ren, F/M, Humor, Pining, Romance, Smut, Witch Rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-22 06:17:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22744816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Errantmushroom/pseuds/Errantmushroom
Summary: “Why does this Ross not simply kill the other males vying for his Rachel’s affections?” He complains, and the way he talks about murder so easily should be alarming, but instead she’s looking at the pucker of his brow and the quirk of his lips and he is seriously so confused that it’s actually adorable.“That’s not how human courtship works. Did you even read Pride and Prejudice?” Rey says around a mouthful of pad thai.(Or: Rey accidentally summons a demon into her living room and proceeds to domesticate him.)
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 31
Kudos: 334





	the devil is not as black as he is painted

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the 2020 Valentine’s Day Collection for the Mighty Networks Reylo website. The prompt I chose is “make me.”
> 
> Featuring Kylo Ren/Ben Solo as a demon and Rey as the unwitting witch who accidentally summons him.
> 
> SN: this is #baby’sfirstsmut. If it sounds weird/awkward/whatever please lmk.

Rey is sipping bad coffee from a styrofoam cup. She’s been nibbling the rim and little bits of styrofoam are now floating in her (very) burnt tasting coffee. She’d dumped in a liberal amount of hazelnut creamer, but really, what had she been thinking? Now it only tastes like a bag of sugar has been thrown in with the sludge in her cup. Her stomach is churning but her eyelids are drooping and if she doesn’t keep a steady supply of caffeine coursing through her veins, she is absolutely going to pass out in a heap on her apartment floor.

  
  


Her finals are days away and she is already ground down to nothing, a zombie of a girl in a university sweater and worn-thin leggings. Her brown hair is a haphazard knot on the base of her neck and she’s been tapping out texts to her mom (adopted, that is, she doesn’t know the one who birthed her) on and off for a day and a half, begging for some kind of spell to get her through this.

Her mom doesn’t believe in using magic to fix their problems. She thinks they (witches, of course) should just deal with them like everyone else. Well, what was the point of having magic in the first place if you weren’t supposed to actually _use_ it?

Rey is reduced to digging through her own paltry set of books for something, anything that will help. A cantrip or a charm, a potion or a snippet line of invocation. Her collection is not nearly as extensive as her mother’s, mostly swiped from her cousins when their parents weren’t looking or thrifted from a shop owner who had no way of knowing what they had on their hands.

Her mother has two whole rooms full of ancient tomes, their covers dyed leather or rich velvet, letters in gilt and ink, the pages inside still fresh as the day they were bound. Her mother even has one wax tablet from the days of Cicero, though she swears it’s only a very basic detection charm. Rey has always been hard-pressed to believe her, but had never gotten her hands on it to find out one way or the other.

It isn’t that ancient spells are necessarily stronger, but in the old days the veils between the worlds were thinner. It was easier to form intention, to feel the magic thrumming beneath your skin. Most spells were written then, before the world became one of iron and fire and oil.

Rey had tried to create her own spells. Once she was able to coax her geranium on the patio to sprout a single extra leaf, but most fizzled out in a spark of smoke. If she was particularly unlucky she might set fire to the drapes in her bedroom. Her favorite paisley pair had gone up in a blaze that wouldn’t budge for any of her usual spells _or_ the fire extinguisher from under the kitchen sink. The flames had only dissipated when the fabric was nothing but ash in a virulent lilac shade.

Rey had swept it up carefully into a little plastic bag and deposited it into her neighbor’s trash can - there was no accounting for what it might due to _Rey’s_ trash can and she didn’t have the money for a new one. As it stood, she was almost afraid that the strangely colored ash would decide to burn her up as well, but nothing else had happened except for their neighbor complaining of the scent of raccoon spray and charred rosemary for a few weeks.

_That_ left a bad taste in Rey’s mouth and had kept her from attempting anything new for a solid six and a half months.

But here she is, cross-legged with her crappy coffee and the oldest book she can parcel out of her collection. It is a rather large codex bound in crumbling black leather, the pages inside a bit yellow on the outer edges, as though the charm keeping it from deteriorating is having trouble fighting back against the inevitability of age.

Rey’s mother had insisted on the practice of language from a young age. This one looks to be written in an older version of Cyrillic, which is unfortunate to say the least, and probably why Rey had avoided trying to translate it before. Rey considers Cyrillic to be one of the most painful languages to transcribe. Was it really necessary to have two completely unrelated words written exactly the same way, with the only difference between them a single accent? Of course it was _Christians_ who came up with the horrible language. No group of people were better at devising tortures.

The title of the book reads something close to Bringer of Light and Rey spends the better part of the day painstakingly transcribing spell after spell. Some are useless, of course, charms for bringing literal light. She finds one that promises to ‘fill the head with wits’ but it just gives her an awful headache. Or maybe that’s from torturing herself by reading Cyrillic in the first place. In which case the spell does nothing, and she downs three tylenol with a glass of water to dull the ache in her temples.

Finally she finds a particularly long spell that calls for a circle wound in yarrow and wild lettuce, honeysuckle and coarse ground salt, with candles lit here and there. Unusual but not unheard of. Rey digs the yarrow and honeysuckle out of her set of ingredient drawers in her bedroom - dried, not fresh, which would have to do. She doesn’t have wild lettuce and digs into her refrigerator for a head of regular lettuce, which she chops roughly.

Rey shoves her couch out of the way - she doesn’t want to risk setting _that_ on fire, it’s an heirloom from her great uncle Theodosius. She forms the small circle and tops the entire thing with ground up pink Himalayan salt, a bit hot in the cheeks as the bottle had cost eight whole dollars and here she is maybe wasting it on a spell that could amount to little more than a lark. Maybe some old Slavic lord had written this as a practice in nothing, a joke to play on someone born hundreds of years after he was long and dead.

Rey huffs at the thought and pulls herself up from where she’d been bent over carefully examining her circle. She doesn’t want to imagine that the spell will fail. She needs it to work, needs it to fill her head with the knowledge she doesn’t have time to memorize, not with a full class schedule and part-time job to boot. She needs it to give the facts and dates that swirl loose around her brain a dais on which to permanently perch.

And so Rey begins to chant. She doesn’t know what all the words mean but she carefully enunciates and when the syllables feel wrong, she corrects and even improvises where it is necessary. The spell goes on for pages and pages, and Rey begins to tire as she feels the magic drain out of her as rivulets of water from a stream. She is not endless, and her mother often warned her of over-exerting herself. Her mother had seen people use up all of their magic in one go. They’d age so quickly they’d turn to naught but bone and ash, or burn up with light from the inside out until that’s all they were, all they’d ever been.

Rey is careful. She lets the magic out slowly and only feeds it if it is about to extinguish, like blowing gently on a pile of embers. Then the spell is over and Rey can’t say that she feels altogether more intelligent or wise or knowledgeable. There is an acrid smell in her living room, almost like rotten eggs and char from a grill, and Rey is so exhausted from performing the entire rite in one go that even the coffee can’t save her now. She wouldn’t care if her whole apartment burned down and took her with it.

The world goes muzzy around the corners and Rey’s eyes drop shut and she curls up in a little pile right there on the floor and goes to sleep.

* * *

Rey wakes to a screeching like a tea kettle and a sticky sweet taste on her tongue not unlike moldy plums. Yes, she’d accidentally eaten moldy plums exactly once before. That is not the point.

She stretches, feline in the sunlight pouring in through the sliding glass door that leads out to the patio, and she opens her eyes.

The first thing she sees is her circle of yarrow and honeysuckle and lettuce and salt, still together despite the fact that she kicks in her sleep and she’d passed out right next to it.

The second thing she sees is a face peering at her above one of the dried yellow flowers. A strong jaw, a plump mouth and a long nose all set below a pair of blood-red eyes. The screech is hissing from between his teeth and Rey, she can’t help it, she lets loose a scream that can curdle milk.

The man, if that is what he is, grimaces and spits out a long chain of sounds that are nearly words but come closer to the way flint strikes on steel to start a fire. 

“Oh my god,” Rey gasps when she’s done screaming. “ _Oh my god,_ what the _fuck_? Who the fuck are you? Why the fuck are you in my house?” She’s waving her arms erratically and she’s pushed herself against a wall to get as far as she can away from the man, brandishing her favorite pink umbrella as though it is a sword.

The man opens his mouth and again spill sounds like gravel being driven over in the driveway. His brow comes together and he shakes his head and clears his throat and tries again. This time it sounds distinctly Russian but Rey can’t make out what he means as he is speaking with such gusto that her brain can’t translate before he’s moved onto the next word.

“What?” She says weakly, still holding the umbrella pointed directly at his chest. She notices dimly that he is within the circle she had made and that he doesn’t cross it. Not with the tip of his large nose, or the toe of his boots, or a quirk of his fingers.

The man inclines his head, considering, then tries, “Yes… yes this one,” he says as though he is surprised by the words as they cross his lips. “What a coarse language. Like - like chewing on a mouthful of dust.” He coughs a little puff of smoke as if to prove his point.

“What?” She blinks at him.

“Are you deaf as well as dumb?” He sniffs at her. “I said - ”

“I heard what you said.” She’s groping for the book, for that stupid spellbook that had clearly done _something_ but it certainly hadn’t awarded her with the knowledge to effortlessly ace her exams. “ _What the fuck are you doing in my living room?_ ”

The man flicks his eyes up and down her body. “Break the circle and I’ll answer your every question.” He purrs.

“Do I look like an idiot to you?”

He opens his mouth.

“Don’t answer that.”

_He’s bound to the circle_ , Rey tells herself. _He’s bound to the circle and I’m safe as long as I don’t break it._ Rey doesn’t know what he is but she knows it can’t be good. A spirit, perhaps, a poltergeist pulled through time and space. She’s harried and her mouth still tastes like fuzz and she’s flipping the pages of the book like a woman possessed.

The man is watching her, shrewd, and smiles lazily. “What a strange little witch.” He says. “I wonder,” he muses. “Surely it wasn’t an accident that you unbound the Prince of Hell from that wretched prison in your hands?”

Rey almost doesn’t hear him, she’s translating a particularly stubborn part of the text and then - _Prince of Hell_.

The blood running through her veins turns to solid ice and she swears she stops breathing for a full minute. But then - no, he must be lying. He can’t be a demon, much less a… a Prince of Hell. He looks incredibly human, if dressed in a wardrobe that’s a bit outdated. His hair is long and glossy black, like raven’s wings. His pants and boots are dark, supple leather. He is wearing a black tunic that has been belted around the middle with a cord. Silver buttons wink up to the column of his throat and draped across his shoulders is a cloak of thick grey fur. 

“Excuse me?” Rey says.

He yawns, though Rey is certain he is faking it to appear uninterested. “Did you not seek out the powers of the mighty Kylo Ren? Did you not find Bringer of Storms, the grimoire that the wretched sorceress Ludmila bound me to?”

“Uhhh,” Rey holds the book between her fingers, dangling it just beyond his reach. “You mean this book? This book right here?”

“That’s the one.” He nods, entirely too pleased with himself.

“But - but it’s called ‘Bringer of Light.’” Rey says numb and struck dumb.

The man, Kylo Ren, glares at her as though she just confirmed his suspicions - that she is very much an idiot. He purses his mouth and refuses to indulge her further.

Rey swipes her hands across her face and groans. Why - _why_ did Rey not read the entire book before attempting the spell? Her mother is always harassing her to be more thorough and Rey had, up until this point, been certain that the older woman was just being paranoid. What was the worst that could happen? Apparently the answer was accidentally summoning the Prince of Hell into the living room of your downtown one-bedroom, six-hundred square foot apartment.

“‘Ludmila the Alluring’?” Rey quirks a brow at the author’s inscribed name.

Kylo Ren shrugs. “She fancied herself a great beauty, I’m sure.”

Rey hums. She’s sure that the sorceress did. Most magic users seem to be prone to vanity, even Rey herself isn’t immune to it. She had, on more than one occasion, brewed a poultice of honey and milk and spearmint to clear a particularly stubborn pimple on the tip of her nose. She often painted maidenhead fern below her eyes in the hopes that it would fade the seemingly permanent purple welts that lived there. This was always to no avail. The bags would be gone for a day and then return the next morning, swollen large and dark as bruises, as if for recompense at her slight.

“It says here that your name is Ben Solo?” She says, brow wrinkled.

Kylo - or Ben, rather, _growls_. It is the sound of a wolf jumping from his throat and she sees his hands go tight, long claws gripping at his sides. When he parts his lips, she sees fangs. “You _dare_ speak that name in my presence?” He snarls. “I should cut your throat out with my bare hands, you worthless girl.”

Rey narrows her eyes and snorts. “As if you could.” 

Calling someone by their name, especially one as innocuous as _Ben Solo_ , is no reason to be rude. In that moment, with her arms crossed over her chest, feet firmly planted on the _correct_ side of the circle, staring down a demon on the other side, Rey resolves to call him nothing but Ben.

Ben shifts instantly, claws blunted and his sharp edges gone muted and soft. He smiles and it is the prettiest thing she’s ever seen. “When you let me out of here, I will.” He says it like a promise.

Rey swallows and tries not to let him see the shiver winding its way beneath her skin. “And this Ludmila bound you… because?”

“I _may_ have killed her lover.” He shrugs.

“Right.” That does it. Demon, Prince of Hell, at least a thousand years old, bound to a book, _murderer_. Rey is out of her depth. She does the only thing she can think of. She calls her mother.

* * *

“I don’t suppose you’re willing to break the circle now, hm?” Ben Solo sings from behind his prison of plants and salt.

“Absolutely not.” Rey scowls.

There is a knock at the door and Rey jumps at the sound, certain that the demon before her must have gotten free somehow, then realizes it’s just her mother and sighs.

The woman at the door is small and grey though her face is unlined and her eyes are sparkling black, bright with cunning. Rey supposes that several hundred years of walking the earth will do that to someone, give them all the wisdom they could possibly hope for, though still not enough to raise a daughter with a better head on her shoulders.

Rey’s mother steps into the house and shivers. “Well, you weren’t kidding, dear. Your whole home reeks of sulfur and smoke.”

Rey trails after her mother like a scolded puppy. She’d called her mother and the woman had scarcely believed her. She was sure, as Rey had been, at first, that Rey must simply have summoned a spirit. Perhaps a poltergeist but nothing so heinous as a demon, and surely not a high ranking one.

Her mother sees the demon and raises her brow, whistles low under her breath. Ben, for his part, gets a ferocious look on his face as though the very presence of a powerful, old witch offends his delicate senses. He hisses something in that first language, shrill and crackling like a bonfire.

Her mother tuts. “He’s a rude one, Rey. Where did you say he came from again?”

Rey surrenders the book, glad to be rid of it, then frowns. “You can understand him?”

Her mother shrugs. “Here and there, he’s just blowing smoke, speaking Infernal - the usual sort of threats from one of his kind,” she says. “‘I’ll flay the skin from your bones, pop out your eyes and feed them to you, tear your still beating heart from your rib cage’. It’s all very rote.”

Rey’s eyes go wide and her mouth drops open.

“Don’t look so shocked, dear, this is the usual sort of fair for them. Quite unoriginal, if I do say so myself. You’ve heard one demon’s curses, you’ve heard them all.” She muses as she pokes and prods at the little circle, much to Ben’s dismay.

He grows _shadowy_ around the edges, there’s no other way to describe it. Rey realizes that he had been hunched inside of the circle before, as now he rises to his full height and it is - imposing, to say the least. His chest is broad and he towers over both Rey and her mother. His mouth parts and he is baring his long fangs, his red eyes flashing. Rey can almost see the outline of a twisted pair of horns rising from between his black curls.

Rey’s mother tuts again at the display. She raises her index finger and murmurs a spell. A root of white light shoots from her fingertip and zaps Ben right in his chest. He gasps at the lance of pain spiking through his ribs and shudders in on himself. He reverts to his previous form without fanfare, again a man, solid and more human than beast.

“You be good or we’ll add dandelion leaf right on top of that yarrow there and then you’ll really be in pain.” Her mother scolds the demon.

“ _You dare threaten me?_ ” He roars, though the effect is dampened somewhat as he is back to looking like he just stepped out of a medieval fair.

Rey’s mother sends another curlicue of lightning at him and he ducks to avoid it, backing right into the border of the circle. He shouts and a smell like burnt rubber fills the room. Rey has to hold her nose, it’s so potent, and goes to open the sliding door to let some fresh air in. When she pads back to the living room, there’s a thick grey smoke rising from his shoulders and he is looking properly admonished.

Rey’s mother gestures for Rey to follow her to Rey’s little bedroom and shuts the door behind them. “Now, Rey, dear, what were you wanting to do with your little demon friend here?” Her mother asks.

Rey groans. “Can’t we just, like, send him back to hell or something?”

Her mother laughs. “Not unless you want him back here to make good on his promise. No, no, he’s seen you, he’s felt your magic. He would certainly find you again.”

“Then what can we do?” Rey says, wringing her hands and hopeless.

“Why, put him back in the book, of course.”

“We can do that?”

“Certainly. Although…”

“What is it?”

Rey’s mother sighs. “It will take some weeks to prepare the binding spell.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “You’ve really done it now, Rey.”

Rey’s cheeks go pink and she mutters something under her breath that sounds suspiciously like an apology, scrubbing one socked toe in the beige carpet. Her mother pulls her into her arms, making Rey stoop down low to meet her.

* * *

Ben Solo is loudly munching chips inside of his circle. It is small but he has stretched out as much as he can, sitting on the carpet. “What did you say these were called again?”

  
  


Rey stops tapping her pen on her knee and peers up over the end of her notebook. “Doritos.” She huffs. She’d given them to him as he wouldn’t stop moaning about how uncomfortable he was, how he hadn’t eaten in a thousand years. He was cold and then he was hot. He wouldn’t stop until Rey gave him a snack and the throw blanket from the sofa.

It is like having a child. An extremely powerful child who is trapped inside a binding circle and who could kill her with one finger if he somehow managed to get out.

  
  


“Do-ree-toes. Hmm.” He crunches the red bag inside of his much larger hand so that it crinkles loudly. Then he does it again. And again. And again.

“Do you mind?” Rey scowls. She is trying fruitlessly to cram for her first exam, introductory mechanical engineering, and she’s been rereading the first line of her notes over and over for the better part of an hour. 

Ben strokes his chin. “Why, yes. Yes, I do.” He says as he resumes crunching loudly.

Rey groans and massages her temples. The pounding in her head is back and she has a feeling that no amount of Tylenol will make it go away this time. “Please. Be quiet.” She grinds out.

“Make me.” He says and the warm hush of his voice doesn’t coil in the pit of her stomach. It _doesn’t_.

“I’ll take away your blanket.” Rey threatens.

Ben lowers a glare at Rey from where she is perched across the room. “You wouldn’t dare.” He says as he pulls the blanket tighter around his shoulders.

“If you’re not quiet, I swear I will.” Rey says firmly.

To his credit, Ben makes an incredible effort to be as silent as possible. For five whole minutes.

“What are you doing?” He asks.

Rey gives him a side eye. “I’m studying.”

“Studying for what?”

“Test for a class. At my university.” She bites out.

Ben appraises her, red eyes sliding from her face to her feet tucked up beneath her, his long black lashes fall against his cheeks. “And did it not occur to you that you have a demon at your disposal?”

Rey’s mouth goes dry. “What?”

“A. Demon.” He says again, slow to get through what he must imagine is a very thick skull. “I can provide anything you wish. For a price.”

Rey is many things but a liar is not one of them. She toys with the idea of accepting his proposal. A deal with a demon sounds, in theory, like a very poor plan. In actuality? It could prove very useful. Though she’d probably have to sign on the proverbial dotted line with her soul as forfeit.

She looks at him and it is as though he can read her thoughts, see them written plainly on her face. He is smiling and she can see every one of his teeth.

She presses her notebook shut and it takes every ounce of self-restraint in her body not to bolt to her room. She slams the door behind her and presses her back against it, heart hammering against the insides of her ribs.

* * *

Rey is drunk. Really, properly drunk. She’d danced all night in a new club downtown, dash her upcoming finals for just a few hours. She’s leaning in Rose’s arms and laughing, laughing, laughing. Everything is funny and fuzzy and nothing really matters at all, does it?

Finn is driving the car around and Poe has turned up the radio, a tinny pop melody filtering through the speakers and they’re all dancing in their seats like they're still in the club. Poe is singing loud and out of tune, sending Rey and Rose into further hysterics.

Without Rey knowing it, they pull into her parking lot and they’re asking her to come up. Of course they are, they always come up, and then they drink more and dance more, smoke and snark and trade secrets like coins. And Rey’s mouth comes open. She is going to say yes. She is going to say yes until her tongue goes dry because there is something she’s forgotten. A tall, dark, and _demonic_ something who is still chilling in her living room like some sort of mood-killing statue of David.

Statue of David. Where had that come from?

Her brain is slow with drink and the world is fuzzy around the edges and it’s funny, she thinks, because he very nearly is as beautiful as a sculpture. With his broad shoulders and the sharp planes of his chest, even beneath his tunic she can tell that he cuts a fine figure. Fine as though he is carved from marble.

There’s something vaguely disturbing about this thought and she can’t quite put her finger on why that is - hot guy trapped in her living room, big enough that she could climb him like a tree - and then her thoughts groggily remind her: not human, demon. Prince of Hell. Wants to kill her, probably, definitely wants to own her soul at the very least. Not exactly boyfriend material. Not even hookup material if she’s being completely honest with herself.

Finn, Poe, and Rose are all staring at her expectantly and Rey realizes she’s been drooling over the demon trapped in her apartment. She wipes her mouth and swallows. “Uhhh…” Lie. Lie. Lie, lie, lie. “I accidentally summoned a demon up there, guys.” She blurts out and, great, they’re staring at her like she’s grown a third head. “It smells like rotten eggs and it’s, like, fifteen degrees hotter than normal, the AC won’t touch it.”

Finn bursts out laughing. “Oh, your AC is out? Why didn’t you just say so? We could just go back to mine.”

Rey opens her mouth to say her AC isn’t out, it’s just that apparently demons are like furnaces and it’s been consistently 85 degrees in there since Ben showed up. Then she shuts it and just smiles, nodding, because that is much better than them thinking she’s crazy, or god forbid, telling the truth.

Her friends are all human. Rey is human too, but she has this _magic_ thrumming inside of her that makes everything more complicated. And Rey loves Finn and Poe and Rose but sometimes she wishes that her mother had wanted to stay with a coven instead of alone, just the two of them. A coven is a family - more than that even. It’s a lifeline. It’s an island. If Rey had a coven, she would at least have someone to talk to about all of this.

As it stands, she bites her bottom lip and tells her very non-magical friends that she’s just so tired, she can’t stay up for another minute. And that she has to study. And she has work in the morning, anyway. Little not-quite-lies that they won’t doubt. 

They hug and promise to see each other again soon, maybe grab coffee and bad talk their professors. Take too many shots and grind their heels on a sticky dance floor.

And Rey climbs the stairs to her apartment alone. She unlocks the door and there he is, Ben Solo, hunched inside of his circle with his red eyes and his red mouth, looking as though he’s been waiting for her for the whole night. Which is silly - because he hasn't been. He’s a veritable prisoner. He has nowhere to go, he has nothing but time.

Before she can think better of it, Rey goes to the kitchen and pours herself a glass of cheap merlot. She’d been saving the wine for a special occasion, but now seems as good a time as any.

“Do you drink?” She says as she sits on the floor in front of him, crossing her legs beneath her.

He grunts something that sounds enough like a yes to Rey and she hands him the bottle of wine the same way she had given him the chips - by practically throwing it into the circle. The bottle teeters and Ben grasps it, keeping it from spilling all over her cream rug. She tries not to notice the way his whole hand easily wraps around the thickest part of the bottle. She tries not to think of that same hand around her throat.

Ben pulls the neck of the bottle to his mouth and drags in a gulp and it is - sinful, his lips pressed to the glass rim, the way his swallow works the column of his throat.

Rey is warm, she’s so _warm_. It has to be him, it has to be the heat rolling off of him like he’s an open oven door. Her cheeks are flushed and her head is swimming. This is a bad idea, it’s such a bad idea. “So,” she rasps. She hadn’t realized her tongue was so dry. When had it gotten so dry? It's like trying to talk around a wad of cotton. She takes a sip of her own wine and wets her lips. “So what’s it like - being a demon?”

Ben tilts his head, considering her. “What is it like being a witch?” He says evenly.

He is evading. Rey doesn’t mind. She doesn’t get to talk about being a witch with anyone, not ever. “It’s okay.” She shrugs. “I haven’t been a witch my whole life, you know, or maybe I have. Maz, that’s my mom, she found me when I was, hmm, six or so.” She says and pretends that it isn’t like being stabbed between the ribs every time she thinks about it. “She said she could ‘smell the magic in me,’” Rey snorts. “Whatever that means. Anyway, she found me scrounging around some dumpsters for food and she took me in. She taught me how to control my magic, mostly, and it’s been fine except for when stuff like this happens.” She throws a hand up, gesturing at him.

Ben’s brow comes together. “Do things like this happen to you… often?”

Rey goes red and slants her gaze away. “No.” She mumbles and it’s so hot. Why is it so hot? There’s sweat beading at her temples and her skin is fevered clammy. She undoes the buttons to her blouse and pulls the sheer material through her fingers so that she is shed down to her tank top.

It doesn’t escape her that Ben’s eyes follow the line of her neck down to her chest, linger there at the swell of her breasts beneath her shirt. He can’t - he couldn’t like it, could he? The way the cloth clings to her skin, the hike of her skirt exposing a stripe of her thigh. No, he wasn’t even human. What interest would he have in a plain mortal girl?

Rey pulls down on her skirt and takes a steadying breath through her nose. “Your turn,” she says. “Tell me what it’s like being a demon.”

Ben is quiet for so long that she thinks he won’t answer her and then he examines his nails for the same amount of time and Rey is about to give up and just head back to her room and pass out when he finally decides to open his mouth. “I ran away.” He says so softly that Rey almost doesn’t hear him. He is still looking at his hands, but he has turned his palms to his face as though he is searching the lines there for a meaning he has never been able to find. “My father is - was human. I killed him while trying to take the throne from my mother. And then I ran away.”

“Ben…” Rey’s voice is little more than a whisper. She stretches her fingers out, so near to touching him, but his head snaps up, broken from his reverie and his red eyes are blazing like embers set in his face.

“Go to bed, Rey.” He snaps.

“But, Ben, I - ”

He snarls like a beast and takes the wine bottle and throws it from the circle so hard that it crashes into the wall behind Rey. The dark glass bursts, the wine dripping like blood into the carpet and Rey runs from the room with tears biting at her eyes.

* * *

Things get, well, not exactly easier but certainly more manageable.

Rey studies and Ben watches her. She finds that he is much quieter if she gives him green tea with his two teaspoons of honey and a squirt of lemon (he prefers the brand they carry at the coffee shop Rey works at to dollar store version in her pantry) and a book to read. He devours Crime and Punishment, Don Quixote, even Wuthering Heights and Emma. Rey resolves to provide her voracious reader with all of the stories he’s missed out on since he got locked up a thousand years ago.

Even Dante’s Inferno, though she’ll hold off a bit on that one, if only so that she can have time to properly observe his reactions.

Rey introduces him to Netflix. She turns the tv to face him and drags the couch over to his circle so that she can pass him popcorn and soda. She is not sure that a demon from the ninth circle of hell (that’s the worst one right? She can’t remember, whatever) should enjoy _Friends_ quite as much as he does.

“Why does this Ross not simply kill the other males vying for his Rachel’s affections?” He complains, and the way he talks about murder so easily should be alarming, but instead she’s looking at the pucker of his brow and the quirk of his lips and he is seriously _so_ confused that it’s actually adorable.

  
  


“That’s not how human courtship works. Did you even read Pride and Prejudice?” Rey says around a mouthful of pad thai.

Ben had never had pad thai (he had touched his fingers to his chin when Rey had asked and he’d wondered aloud if raw goat counted as a form of pad thai - it doesn’t). Rey considers this a sin that is definitely worthy of the ninth circle of hell and so she’d ordered in and nearly force fed him rice noodles until he begrudgingly admitted that, yes, it was pretty good.

Rey had expected to hear _life changing_ or _orgasmic_ but for Ben, pretty good is probably on par with either of those so she doesn’t argue.

Ben grunts. “Yes, I read it, and I still believe that if Mr. Darcy had mounted his Elizabeth at the ball in the first place then none of the other ridiculousness would have ever happened.”

Rey swipes her hands across her face so that he doesn’t see the way her cheeks flush at the way his lips form the word ‘ _mounted_ ’ and the implication of Mr. Darcy fucking Elizabeth in front of everyone like a bad romance paperback, extra heavy on the voyeurism.

“That isn’t the point.” She says, strained. She doesn’t actually know what the point is anymore. She’s only thinking of his mouth and his hands and -

“Then what is?”

Uhhh. She thinks her brain may have actually shorted out for a second. “What?”

Ben gives her a look - something like disgust - as though he can’t believe she’s this much of an idiot, forgetting what they’re talking about mid-conversation. “The point.” He says dryly.

“Oh. Yeah.” Rey swallows. “Well, in stories, people love the _drama_ , the will-they-won’t-they, you know? If they just got together right at the start then there’d be nothing to keep reading or watching for.”

“And what about in real life?”

“Real life?”

Ben huffs. “Yes, what is courting like for mortals in real life, not stories?”

Rey bites down on her lip. This is definitely _not_ what she wants to talk about right now and she can’t believe that he’d even ask, but he’s looking at her expectantly, almost patient. She takes a bite of her food if only to give her racing thoughts, her hammering pulse a moment to settle, then she sets the take out box beside her. 

“If - if two people, or sometimes more,” she amends and he raises a brow but stays silent. “If they like each other _like that_ , they’ll maybe go on dates and if they keep liking each other they’ll go on more dates and then eventually they might move in together, get married, have some kids. Or not. Everyone is different.” 

“I see.” He says evenly, in a way that most definitely does not imply that he has no idea what she’s talking about. “And what is a ‘date’?”

Rey laughs. “Have you not been watching _Friends_?” His brow comes together and Rey can see the confusion on his face. She clears her throat. “Dates are like... watching movies together or eating dinner and talking, getting to know each other. The people on the date might compliment each other, exchange gifts, that sort of thing.”

Too late she realizes what she has said as Ben’s eyes go from the food in their hands to the television playing in the background. “Not like this.” She says too quickly. “We’re just trapped here together so we might as well make the best of it, right?”

To her relief, Ben nods and says nothing more on the matter. They go back to watching _Friends_ and eating pad thai and pretending that things are normal. Well, as normal as they can be for a demon trapped in a summoning circle and the witch who put him there.

* * *

Rey passes her exams, no thanks to Ben, and decides to celebrate.

  
  


She chooses to go on a date because it can’t be healthy to be this horny for a demon that’s trapped in your living room, and hooking up with someone to release all her pent up stress is customary. This guy at her work, Mark something-or-another, has been giving her ‘fuck me’ eyes and pestering her for months to just give him a chance already. He’s nice enough and best of all, he looks nothing like Ben, all blue eyes and wispy blonde hair.

In the end, Rey can’t go through with it.

They had a few drinks and then dinner at the nicest Italian place in three square miles of Mark’s apartment. For reasons. He had started getting handsy, trailing kisses down her neck with his hands on her hips. Normally she would be into that but this time? She just… wasn’t.

And it’s not because she can’t stop thinking of a certain demon and wishing it was him instead. It’s not.

She had begged Mark off of her, told him she wasn’t feeling well all of a sudden, probably shouldn’t have had the shrimp, and had him drop her off at her apartment. She promised to text him and when he went to give her a kiss goodnight, she gave him her cheek.

Rey goes into her apartment, cursing herself and her stupid ovaries, and Ben is staring her down. She won’t look at him, she mutters something about being tired and wanting to go to bed. And maybe that’s what gives her away.

He _sniffs_. Once, twice, then a third time and Rey is about to ask him just exactly what he thinks he’s doing when he curls a lip. “You _smell._ ” 

That stops her where she stands. “I… smell?” She says, brow scrunched. Did she have garlic for dinner? No, that isn’t it - she blows into the palm of her hand and her breath smells fine. She is wearing the only perfume she owns, a floral and chamomile spritz on the pulse points of her wrists. She shrugs and tells him as much.

“No,” he growls and - he’s furious, Rey realizes all at once. “You smell like you’ve been with a _man._ ”

The implication - Rey flushes and, god, if only the carpet could open up and swallow _her_ into hell so that she didn’t have to have to explain this to him. “It’s - I… I went on a date, that’s all.” She says and her voice is weak in her own ears.

“A date.” He repeats.

“Yeah, you know, like the whole courting thing?” Even as the words leave her mouth, she knows by the glare on his face that it’s the wrong thing to say. “It’s just, uh, we just had dinner and - and -” she can’t make herself say it. She can’t make herself say that she didn’t _sleep_ with the guy, they just fooled around a little bit, and what does Ben care anyway?

But Ben - he gets dark, the way he had weeks ago when her mother came over. His edges melt into the shadows, his fangs bared and his claws curled. There, nestled about his glossy black hair, grow a pair of horns like that of a goat. He is tall, so tall, more beast than man now and he takes a step, just one, and the toe of his boot presses against the invisible barrier of the summoning circle.

“What are you doing?” Her heart is slamming against her ribs and she’s gone very pale because she knows what he’s doing.

He’s trying to leave the circle.

And she should run. She should run as far and as fast as she can but she _can’t make her feet move_. “Ben, Kylo, stop, please stop!” She cries and _why can’t she move_ _damnit_? Tears prick at the corners of her eyes and her breath is coming in gasps and she’s more afraid than she’s ever been because this man, this _demon,_ is going to kill her. He will cut her throat and drink her blood and he will probably kill her mother too and -

He’s pressed against the barrier and it sparks and pops against his skin. That same smoke from before pours from him but he takes another step, then another, and then he is free of the circle. 

Ben lords himself above her like a tower, so near that he could press his nose into her hair and Rey flinches but he doesn’t kill her. Not yet.

“Get - get back into the circle.” Rey hopes he can’t hear the tremor in her voice, hopes she sounds braver than she feels.

“No.” Ben’s warm breath blows across her cheek and it’s like being up against the blaze of a bonfire with him so close to her, like she is burning up.

“No?”

“No, I don’t think I will.” He says, his voice gone dark and silken. “Unless you’d like to try to make me?”

Rey shivers, a fizzle of electricity skirting down her spine. He’s going to kill her and there is a frisson of desire there all tangled up with her fear. How fucked up is that?

He leans down and she freezes, eyes gone doe-wide and certain that he is going to make good on his threat to slit her throat with his bare hands.

Instead, she feels something warm and wet at the bend of her skin where her neck meets her shoulder.

His tongue. It’s his tongue.

He licks a stripe up her to jaw, humming against her like she tastes just as good as he had imagined and - yep - there it is. Her brain shorts out. Her vision goes static and when she comes to, he’s trailing kisses up to her mouth, licking and sucking at her bottom lip.

He is pressed up against her, his arms crowding her into the wall. When did she back into the wall? She doesn’t know, she doesn’t care. All she knows is the broad plain of his chest, the smell of him in her lungs. She pulls in a shuddering breath and it is all him. Woodsmoke and pine, the wild of a cold night. 

He has one hand on her waist and the other creeping up her ribs and Rey gasps into his mouth at the heat of his fingers. He growls low in the back of his throat, grinds his hips roughly into her. She can feel him there, hard against her stomach alongside all the heat coiled tight within her. 

“You shouldn’t - we shouldn’t.” She tries. He pulls back and glares at her, indignant, as though she were the one who had started this. His pupils are blown so wide that there is only a skinny ring of red around the black and he’s breathing hard, a tremor running through his jaw.

“Is this not what I’m meant to do?” He says and his voice is smaller than she expected, almost uncertain. He is shaking under the weight of his want, she can feel it in his hands. He’s gripping her so hard that can practically feel the bruises blooming beneath his fingers.

Her mind is syrup slow, clouded over by a fog of lust. She licks her lips, tastes him, all cinnamon and green tea, sweet and salty. “What you’re meant to do?”

He swallows thickly. “You shouldn’t smell like him, you shouldn’t smell like anyone but me.” He says. “ _I’m_ courting you. You’re _mine_.” His words come out viciously, softly, a promise and a threat all at the same time.

_Mine_.

The word sends a stroke of fire straight to her core and she clenches her thighs together, wet and warm between her legs.

“Okay.” She whispers, brow drawn together.

His eyes go wide. “You agree?”

She kisses him then and if he is surprised, he doesn’t show it. He lifts her by her hips as easily as if she’s weightless and she reflexively wraps her legs around his waist, her arms tangled in the dense curls at the nape of his neck.

  
  


Ben walks them to Rey’s room and drops her onto her bed. She is hot, frenzied, and goes to strip. He grabs her wrists in one hand and shakes his head. “I want to.” He says and his voice is hushed, reverent. She’s wearing a little floral dress and he peels it off of her slowly, too slowly for Rey, who squirms against his featherlight touch.

When she’s bare, he kisses up her rib cage and takes her breast into his mouth. He rolls her nipple, plush pink, between his tongue, up against his teeth until she’s writhing under him. He slips his fingers inside her, one, two, three until she’s close - so close to begging him that she’s choking on it.

He says, “you’re so wet.” With that same reverence and Rey wonders if demons can pray because he sounds as though he is praying to her.

He sheds his own clothes and holds her, fevered skin to skin, a living fire, and then lines the length of him up against her core and snaps his hips into her. His hand is around her throat and her nails are digging into his back. He is so deep inside of her, she is so full of him, again and again until there is nothing else, there was never anything else.

After, he holds her, tells her she is his until she believes it.

* * *

It shouldn’t surprise Rey when she’s working a few mornings later (she’d slipped out of bed and gotten ready as quickly as she could) and Ben shows up.

  
  


He’s wearing some of the clothes she’d bought for him (being a demon with infernal magic and all, he probably could have conjured his own, but Rey didn’t trust him to pick something normal). A black boatneck sweater and a pair of black jeans (Rey is still trying to convince him that colors exist).

And he’s brandishing a sword.

A fucking _sword_.

“Mark something-or-another,” oh god, she _really_ wishes she hadn’t given him Mark’s name. “I’ve come to challenge you who dared try to stake claim on what is mine,” he yells into the small cafe and his words reverberate against the walls. Thankfully, there’s only Rey and one other patron in at the moment. “Come out, you coward, or I’ll - ”

Rey tackles him. Well, she tries to tackle him. She mostly ends up shoving him as hard as he can while he gives her an incredulous look. “You’re going to get me _fired!_ ” She hisses at him.

“It’s okay! My boyfriend thinks he’s funny, he’s part of the renaissance fair that’s in town - haha right?” She tells the nearly-empty cafe. Then she’s pushing Ben again and telling him to _get out_ and this time he lets her.

They’re in the parking lot and his mouth has parted slightly. “Boyfriend?” He says, and then he’s smiling, far too pleased with himself. “I’m your boyfriend?”

Rey’s mouth puckers like she’s swallowed a lemon. “Oh so _now_ you start paying attention to _Friends_?” She says but he’s expectant and she sighs. “Fine, yes, you can be my boyfriend, is that what you wanted to hear?”

And it must be because he’s kissing her hard and she’s gasping against him. She pulls away gently and says, stern as she can manage with an incredibly hot demon glued to her body, “but only if you promise not to try to kill Mark anymore.”

Ben purses his lips. “There are other ways of - ”

  
  


“No torturing or maiming of any kind, I’m serious.”

He hums, considering. “Only if you make me.” He purrs against her throat and Rey’s face burns as she nods into him.

* * *

“Mom, you’re not going to believe this but… you know that demon, the one I accidentally let out of that weird ass Russian book? Well, I’m not going to need the spell to bind him back. Uh. We’re sort of - dating now. Talk later, love you, bye!” _Click_.  
  


* * *

“Hey Rey, it’s Rose. Look… something happened. I know you’re a witch and - don’t try to say you’re not, like really - I just. I need your help. Can you call me back?” Then, in the background of the voicemail, a voice cries, “I am _Armitage Hux_ , how _dare_ you bind me to this paltry circle. When I get out of here, I will - ” _Click_.

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
